Top 5 reasons to get a DVR

// September 11th, 2007 // fun

I heard just a few days ago, on this very blog, that someone didn’t have a DVR and welcomed my attempt to persuade him otherwise. Well, here I am doing just that, completely ignoring the fact that if you don’t have one yet…wow.

We’ve had a DVR for almost the entire six years we’ve lived in our house. Thanks to a Best Buy gift certificate from our builder for recommending another person to buy a house, I had an excuse to go get a TIVO. Jina wasn’t too thrilled and was skeptical about the entire thing. I promised her that she’d love it…and it didn’t take too long until we both couldn’t imagine watching TV without it.

Since then, it’s become our friend and companion in our TV-watching ways. Sad, yes…but the list below should be enough to make anyone run out and buy one.

So here we go…my Top 5 reasons to get a DVR:

5) You can pause and manipulate live TV. I mean it. You get a phone call, you gotta hit the bathroom, whatever, you can pause live TV to get stuff done. The DTV DVR has a 90 minute buffer to allow you a 90 minute bathroom break, or to make dinner or go get some beer and pizza in between games on Sunday. It’s really amazing. Then there are things like rewinding and slow motion. You want to see that play again?
Rewind it and watch it in slow motion, or normal speed. Never miss anything again!

4) Season passes. You like a show? Well, put it on a season pass or series link on DTV and your show will be recorded automatically, anytime it’s on, even if it changes days or times. You can choose reruns or only new shows. It rocks. When the new fall shows get ready to have their season debuts, your DVR will automatically pick them up again. Awesome. Brilliant.

3) Skipping Commercials. So you hate commercials? Get a DVR, record your shows and fast-forward through the commercials. In our house we rarely watch anything LIVE, we tape it or pause live TV, and then start watching it about 15 minutes into the show. Even when we have big Lost premier parties, people always know to show up 20 minutes after the show begins. Who needs commercials?!?!

2) Saving things. I still have the Suns versus Mavericks game from March of this year, where Nash hits a big three to send the game into overtime. Jina has a movie saved from a year ago. With a click of a button, you can watch these things again. If you get a Windows Media Center computer/DVR, with a ton of storage, you can have an entire library of shows and movies to browse through. What if you see a commercial or moment you wanted to show someone but they weren’t there? Just hit record and it will record anything that is in its buffer. Stop recording and you have a little clip to show someone later. Been there, done that!

1) Freedom. Go on vacation, spend the evening out, do whatever you want, your shows will be recorded and you can watch them whenever you wish. It actually can help you watch LESS TV, because you watch what you want, when you want and skip the commercials. We went on vacation as you all know, and we left without worrying about anything taping. No need to set the VCR. Just leave and it takes care of itself.

Now, coming down the line are cooler things for Direct TV DVR’s, like remote access where you can log into DTV.com and tell your DVR to record something from anywhere in the world. Awesome. There will also be access to your taped shows on your home network if you set it up right.

Finally, I just want to add…not having a DVR these days is like not having a VCR 10 years ago. Granted, it’s taken awhile to catch on, but it’s so easy to get and use. For example, COX cable is just as simple as calling up, requesting one and paying an extra $10 a month. You basically rent their DVR.

DTV costs a bit more to get, but it’s so much better than the COX DVR from what I hear.

So I hope this helped persuade someone to get a DVR and give it a shot.

Now, if anyone needs to be convinced to get High-Definition in their house, LET ME KNOW! :)

(also, please comment if you have any other awesome tales about why you love your DVR)

8 Responses to “Top 5 reasons to get a DVR”

  1. Auntie says:
    September 12, 2007 at 7:37 am

    Umm…funny you should post this info. I was just gonna tell everyone to pop a tape in their VSH recorders (and YES,…I still tape stuff) I have a DVR but haven’t figured out how to use it yet. But I prefer VSH tapes to DVD when it comes to rewinding to a specific spot. But I digress. My reason for this comment it to let everyone know that starting thursday at 9:30 a.m. USA is re-running all the BURN NOTICE episodes. So that’s 9:30 to 5p.m., then at 10 p.m., a new episode airs. And next week is the end of the season episode. Please watch, so it won’t get cancelled.

  2. Mike says:
    September 12, 2007 at 8:16 am

    I will be taping them….no worries! I hope you’re right!

  3. hay says:
    September 12, 2007 at 9:13 am

    I think Mike likes his TV a little too much.

  4. Horatio Schwartz, Captain of the Everglades says:
    September 12, 2007 at 10:15 am

    Not to be a buzzkill, but regardless how many people tune into it, if you arent registered with Neilsen ratings system and they monitor what you are viewing representing 230k households…. then it wont count…. can you say Tenspeed and Brownshoe?

  5. Horatio Schwartz, Captain of the Everglades says:
    September 12, 2007 at 10:39 am

    MO, nice list of reasons to get one…
    Now are there equal reasons to not get one? Let me try….
    # 1) It’s a major pain in the arse to get one!!!!
    I have direct TV (man I can make this a really long story, but wont), essentially I have to upgrade to the new dish, the new dish is not compatable with current boxes, the new dish is extremely heavy and cant be mounted on a roof (its heavier than the old dish by 45 lbs), there is for $65.00, a mount that MIGHT let you mount the new one on your roof. If its not on your roof, then it has to be on a fence or such, which for me means I would need over 75 feet of extra cable to have it listed on my wall in the back. Such extra cord would degrade the HD signal and picture (sorta like HD pics looking diff on tv’s in best buy) would look worse. Additionally, for an HD DVR, if i want to have it in my main room where surround sound is, it means i would lose all local HD channel capability I currently get from a local HD attenae(surely you will say you dont need local HD attenae anymore since the new dish provides it), yes but when its showing the signal, and if they dont charge more for it, so the local HD antennae is a nice backup as well and would not want to deactivate it. So then you say well put it in another room, ok I could (but would lose surround sound capability, but lets say I’m ok with that), they would then have to drop another cable around my house and through an outside wall to bring it into the room it would work best in (I would face signal degregation again, as well as another hole form the outside of my house (surely you will say you dont need an additional hole, just get him to use existing line feeds), they wont do that. Its an additional cable to record 2 channels at once, and where it would go, would be through a fire wall, so they need the additional hole as they dont do drop down trhough fire walls…..WHEW!!!!
    #2) You dont need a #2, cause #1 is still a pain in the arse….

    Its highly frustrating to have this tech available but trying to coordinate it has been short of a nightmare. Direct TV contracts out all its work (well most of it) and trying to get Jimmy Neutron to come to your house to make it all work seemlessly is near impossible. I have tried on 3 separate occasions to make this work, and 3 times it hasnt (a story for another day, hence the long version, and no this wasnt the long version :P )

  6. Jina says:
    September 12, 2007 at 11:06 am

    I just want to go on the record with two things…

    1. Horatio just posted the longest comment ever
    2. I don’t have a movie from a year ago, nice try Mike!

  7. Horatio Schwartz, Captain of the Everglades says:
    September 12, 2007 at 12:48 pm

    I tried to do it all in one breath too =)

  8. Mike says:
    September 12, 2007 at 5:25 pm

    Wow Horatio…just wow.

    Okay.

    1. I got my upgraded dish and stuff for free. Not sure why you’d have to pay for it.

    2. I’ve had my new dish up for 5 months now, and the older Tivo in the bedroom works just fine. Yeah, i wont get the new HD Mpeg4 channels on it, but it’s still backwards compatible.

    3. My satellite is mounted on the edge of my roof, nothing special there. Not sure why you need a mount for it?

    4. My install for the new dish and hd dvr cost me $99.

    5. I have an antenna on the roof for my local HD channels…why can’t you use it in another room? No cable to it?

    I guess you seem to have a lot of issues there, but it’s strange because I have DTV and Scott and Tyler who post here have it as well, and they didn’t have any of the problems you are. I mean…who are you calling to get it installed? I would call DTV directly, and talk to someone. If they wont give you the dish installed for FREE and the new HD DVR for $99 installed, then I’d ask for customer retention because you are ticked that you didn’t get the same deal other people have.

    It shouldn’t be this hard for you to get it.

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